Jenni Wiltz

Book #2 in the Natalie Brandon Thriller Series

Meet the heroine readers call “brilliant,”“strong,” and “insightful” in a series that’s “compelling, fast paced, and action packed.”

Natalie Brandon has a secret. She knows a 700-year-old Dante manuscript up for auction is a fake, but no one believes her because she was diagnosed with schizophrenia. To stop the auction, she enlists the help of her sister Beth, a history professor. But when the forger’s scheme crumbles, he seeks revenge…because the sisters have cost him more than money. Natalie and Beth have just disrupted an even bigger plot – a web of lies spun over forty years and four countries, ensnaring a British baron, a Bolshoi ballerina, a Russian mobster – and the elusive Soviet defector who ties them all together. Can Natalie save her sister and catch the forger…without turning the forces of an international conspiracy against them?

Travel back to 2007, five years before the events of The Romanov Legacy…and see how Constantine, Viktor, Vadim, and Liliya choose the paths that led them to their fate.

Start reading now! The web sample contains the first 8 chapters. You can also read the first few chapters on my Read Now page, no download required.

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A girl tormented by an angelic hallucination…

September 1994San Francisco, California

The principal’s office was across the playground, in a peach building with rounded columns. Natalie walked in the opposite direction, across the kickball field and through a hole in the chain-link fence. It took forty-five minutes to walk home, according to the Hello Kitty watch Beth gave her for her birthday. Natalie unlocked the back door with the spare key Beth kept under a basket of shells. Her dad would be at work and her mom would be in a stupor on the couch, surrounded by little bottles.

The coast is clear, little one, said Belial.

“You did this,” she said, stepping inside. “You made them hate me.”

They already hated you, Belial said. I just made you see it.

Natalie bit her lower lip. A moment later, she tasted blood.

She tiptoed into her father’s study and grabbed a slim green book lying on the desk: Dante’s Inferno. Whatever it was about would be better than school. She tucked it in her sweatshirt and went to hide in the empty doghouse in the corner of the garage. It must have come with the house, because they’d never had a dog. It was big enough for a person and no one went near it because it was full of daddy-long-legs spiders.

She crawled inside and blew on a reluctant spider to convince it to move out of her way. When she was settled, cross-legged on the dusty dog blanket, she pulled the book out of her sweatshirt.

Brighton’s Auction House

•Lab manager •Responsible for security & accuracy of tests run on the Dante manuscript

Alfie

•Lab tech •Introduced to Fielding by Sinclair •Severin’s friend; went to boarding school together

A woman with a secret no one understands…

November 2007San Francisco, California

Natalie let the simple words—blue, blonde, Seth—float across the blackness of her mind. The letters expanded until they pushed the darkness away. When everything was gone, she opened her eyes. There was Beth, by her side, looking at her with worry. Why do I keep hurting her? she asked Belial.

The angel didn’t answer.

“How do you feel?” Beth asked.

“Better. Because of you.”

“I’m glad.” Her sister smiled. “You sure keep me on my toes, kiddo.”

Natalie’s eyes drifted down to the notepad. “We need to figure out Dante’s message before the doctor comes back.”

“Message? What message? Is that what you thought you were doing?”

“Of course. Why else would I have done it?”

“Nat, you didn’t write a message. You wrote the goddamn Inferno.”

“He said it was important. That no one else would listen. There’s a message in it—there has to be. You believe me, don’t you?”

Beth never even blinked. “You know I do, babe.”

“The message must be in the poem.” She looked at the gray shadows beneath her sister’s eyes that seemed to deepen by the hour. “You take a nap. I’ll start reading. If I find it, I’ll wake you up.”

“Are you sure?” Beth asked, yawning at the word “nap.”

“I’m sure.”

With a smile, Beth slouched down in the chair. Within four breaths, Natalie could tell she was asleep.

We could have used her help, Belial said.

“You and I will have to be enough. Read it with me.”

Together, they began to whisper each line out loud, the rhythm of Dante’s poetry creating a pulse as steady as any heartbeat.

Every saga has an origin story. The adventure begins here.

The Dante Deception was last modified: October 20th, 2017 by Her Highness

About Me

I went to science camp in fifth grade. I wasn't special or anything - everyone had to go, even two kids from the one-room schoolhouse down the road. Our counselors were high-school students, but they might as well have been adults. They could drive, they went on dates, they had jobs, and each of us had questions we were dying to ask. Some kids asked about cars. One asked whether they liked being counselors. Me? I asked when we'd finally get to study the French Revolution.

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